Stuff

Just to catch up on the post-budget YouGov polling from yesterday’s Times, carried out on Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

At the simplest level, the budget appears to have polled well. All the measures within met with approval and overall people thought it was a fair budget (44% fair, 14% unfair). Compared to other recent budgets, that’s a very positive score. However, in all fairness that’s what one should expect – it was very much a giveaway budget, with the Chancellor making several large spending announcements and very little in the way of tax increases. Even those tax increases that were announced – mostly notably the plastics tax and tax on internet companies – were ones that were largely popular. It’s hardly surprising that sort of budget gets net positive ratings – increases to NHS funding, the personal allowance and the National Living Wage are always likely to go down well.

A positively received budget does not, however, necessarily translate into a boost in the polls. The voting intention figures in the poll are CON 41%(nc), LAB 39%(+3), LDEM 7%(-1), UKIP 5%(+1). The three point increase in Labour support doesn’t necessarily mean anything – it’s within the normal margin of error – but it certainly doesn’t point towards a budget boost for the Tories.

The poll also asked about the wider perceptions around the “end of austerity”, and here the figures are far less rosy for the Conservatives. Looking back, by 36% to 29% people think that the austerity polices followed after the 2010 election were necessary, though by 36% to 30% they now think they didn’t help the economy and by 43% to 20% they think they were unfair.

58% of people now think it is right to end austerity (27% who think it was wrong to begin with, 31% who thought it was right at the time, but it is now time to end it). Unfortunately for the government, while people may be in agreement with their stated policy, they don’t actually believe they are doing it – only 10% think the government have ended austerity policies, 50% think they have not.

2,160 Responses to “YouGov post-budget poll”

“Making things up indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you post a figure or link to back up your position.”

Oh God I’ve posted loads in the past on various things. I assume you’re up to speed on various things and hence won’t demand proof, similarly I dint keep asking for proof for each of your claims when I know it’s true.

I mean, when you say household disposable has gone up, I don’t challenge it, and make you post a link, I know it’s true. Similarly when I say that well yes, more spouses go to work these days, and Boomers are doing well, you’re not likely to challenge that are you?

Anyway, I posted a link to the Guardian article which showed the impact of tax changes. You even pointed out wages had gone up since the Sixties. (I shan’t go into the memory thing again though!)

“The Office for Budget Responsibility’s long-term projections from last year suggest that low annual net migration to the UK economy (105,000 a year) would result in GDP growing less fast, tax revenues being weaker and the public debt as a share of GDP being higher than otherwise.

Under a low-net migration scenario the debt to GDP ratio rises above 100 per cent in fifty years’ time.

The high net migration (224,000 per year) scenario results in stronger public finances, with the debt to GDP ratio at 70 per cent by 2065.

The central projection of 165,000 per year net migration sees debt climb to 85 per cent of GDP.

This modelling reflects the economic research which suggests immigrants to the UK, particularly from Europe, are more likely to be younger than the native population and more likely to work and pay taxes than to claim benefits.

The tax benefit of the presence of immigrants is seen as outweighing the financial cost they impose through greater pressure on local infrastructure and public services.

Other research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggests immigrants boost our national productivity by filling gaps in the labour market that would otherwise not be filled, which ultimately means faster GDP growth and higher incomes per head for us all.”

“The UK’s average output per hour worked is £40, £83200 a year in a full time job, of which the state captures about a third in revenues. Where does someone working for the minimum wage fit into that, especially given that the state taxes a smaller portion of a lower-paid workers output.”

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Well you’re assuming again someone low-waged would not be producing much. And anyway, do the production figures really capture the value. Do they include the value of lives saved through cleaning? The stuff they go on to produce? Or the cost of construction projects being held up if we lose those immigrants from the construction sector?

“Oh, I know, you’ll say that we need to ‘create better jobs’, but where does low-paid immigration fit into that, and why is it beneficial to have a large influx of people who you need to invest to create those better jobs for? We have a higher proportion of people working in lower paid and skilled careers than much of the rest of Northern Europe anyway, you provide no evidence as to why your prescription for creating better jobs wouldn’t work much, much better to redress that balance if we were to close off the supply of the lowest earners. If it’s about the price of essentials, by which I think you mean housing, then how does the public benefit from having to spend large sums building houses to deal with the additional demand coming from new arrivals who don’t pay enough in taxes to cover the costs?”

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Once again, I am not arguing for or against having more, or less, low-waged immigrants.

I am simply pointing out they may contribute more than their wages (and possibly more than as captured by just looking at output in terms of floors cleaned etc.)

And that one might get more out of them if we improved social mobility, as with the natives. And that they don’t have to be a drag on wages etc.

Instead of an argument for or against low-waged immigration, i am just being clearer about factors that affect the determination of its value.

“I don’t think there’s any contradiction in wanting to liberalise public sector wages, whilst placing limitations on immigration. The former is currently a command economy, and the latter is full-on laissez-faire neoIiberalism (at least when it comes to EEA migration). I’m arguing for both to be brought towards a middle position. As far as I’m concerned an earnings threshold for working visas is a similar sort of intervention as the minimum wage.”

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I agree the current approach to free movement etc. is very liberal.

Can’t agree with the command economy thing. At one end of the scale, a command economy would be everything state controlled. At the other end, everything would be private sector. We are somewhere in between, a mixed economy, some state, some private.

Even within particular sectors – health, education etc. – there is often a mix.

“Blimey.. it’s like being savaged by a guinea pig. [To paraphrase ole Geoffrey.]
Anyway, apologies for interrupting your harangues of yet another weekly opponent – do carry on with your multiple “and I should adds”….”

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Lol, well there wasn’t any attempt to savage you Paul, you’re getting things wrong again. I just gently reminded you that you had gotten something else wrong again. For there was no “Royal we”, no attempt to be “scary” as you put it. I just appealed to his own experience of being lumped together.

I was once bitten quite painfully by a guinea pig — or was it a hamster, I never remember the difference– I was baby-sitting.

Anyway it was one of those rodents that runs on a treadmill all night ,to simulate its 50 mile, in-the-wild dashes across the desert to find a blade of grass.

PS I have now done extensive research — it must have been a hamster.

“In the 1700s Dutch and English traders brought guinea pigs over from South America to Europe, where they became popular pets for the aristocracy. It is possible that on the journey over to Europe that they did stop at Guinea, leading people to believe that was where they came from. Queen Elizabeth 1 owned a pet guinea pig, which probably accounted for their popularity as pets from that time.”

Hamsters were not “discovered” until v late & not imported until this century.

Lol [and just to add] – only the ten posts winging their way to garj [so far….] on this page.

He’ll be beginning to feel neglected.

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Roger M

Hamsters are littler is my understanding.

My wife has just rescued a hedgehog [which was nice of her.]

S/he was very lacking in enough weight for hibernation so she is feeding him up and [luckily] I have found a sanctuary, for loads of animals, near Barnard Castle which are experts, offer infra red heating lamps etc, so he is off for his winter vacation tomorrow.

The Armed Forces belong to the UK government. Their slalries, deductions for accommodation etc – and even their overseas payments, are based on ‘UK’ not componant regions. Hence why they are compensated for being worse off at certain levels in Scotland. The benchmark measure is the UK level, which is the standard rates set in Parliament. They aren’t paying more when they go back south of the border – they are returning to their standard level.

It went through the Scottish Courts initially.

OLDNAT – Really? so Sturgein doesn’t repeatedly claim Scotland is in the Single Market etc? (when it isn’t – the UK is)

“The government hopes it can win over Tory sceptics and some Labour MPs with firm reassurances that the Irish backstop will not be indefinite.

But Baker said few would be convinced. If the deal is voted down, he predicted there would be a moment of “profound political crisis”, during which Eurosceptic Tory MPs would be able to shift the government’s negotiating stance towards a looser future relationship with the EU.

Meanwhile, anti-Brexit MPs believe if the deal is voted down, the crucial days afterwards could be when parliament seizes control of the process and insists on a second referendum or at least a closer future relationship with the EU.”

from the Guardian, certainly suggests a dramatic binary choice will be coming soon.

There seems to be no majority anywhere for anything. Which just might suggest there is a possibility that MPs can make decisions on what happens next, with more concern about the country being able to agree something collectively, than with narrow party issues.

Is it only me who think Raab’s ‘admission’ is taking one for the team and that he would have known that the Dover-Calais trade was so vast already.

I reckon this is a device to get mainstream Brexiteers on board with customs plans.

The implication being:

If me Dominic Rabb a committed Leaver recognises it is more complex than I initially thought and we need a longer customs arrangement with the EU blah blah it is OK for you to support the deal as well.

No idea who “Sturgein” is, but our FM certainly points out that Scotland is in the EU Single Market and Customs Union and most Scots don’t want to be taken out of them.

She has never suggested that Scotland is currently an EU member state, so it’s probably safe to assume that you are rather ignorant of most matters concerning Scotland.

I’m unsure as to why you continue to be so very confused about what the “UK” is. Judging by your response to Hireton, you imagine it to be the current geography of the UK minus one or more bits that you arbitrarily choose to exclude.

The UK is actually all of the bits. Different policies apply within the 4 polities, while some are common to all. That’s not too hard a concept for most people to get their heads around. By definition “UK” applies to all of the component units of the Union. As soon as you take one or more parts out of consideration, it’s no longer “UK” but a sub unit of that entity.

I do understand that you may be regretful that your polity is merely a sub-unit of a wider institution.

@R&D – these low weight immigrant hedgehogs that you’ve been finding; what impact do you think they have on aggregate demand, and don’t you think that @Oldnat’s piles of leaves might distort the hibernation market for local hedgehogs?

And what about older hedgehogs? They’ve got all the worms, leaving the younger generation….yawn….

“I would expect the new Prime Minister on September 9th to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners. I would expect that the negotiation phase of most of them to be concluded within between 12 and 24 months.”

Giggle!

“So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU. Trade deals with the US and China alone will give us a trade area almost twice the size of the EU……”

‘Massively larger’? Guffaw!

“Now the new trade agreements will come into force at the point of exit from the EU, but they will be fully negotiated and therefore understood in detail well before then. That means that foreign direct investment by companies keen to take advantage of these deals will grow in the next two years.”

With FDI running at virtually 0%, according to the IFS, that’s a screamer!

“This leaves the question of Single Market access. The ideal outcome, (and in my view the most likely, after a lot of wrangling) is continued tariff-free access. Once the European nations realise that we are not going to budge on control of our borders, they will want to talk, in their own interest…..”

“As the free trade round and associated economic policies progress, we should see a material increase in foreign direct investment and domestic capital expenditure to take advantage of the opportunities that are created.
This means that some of the economic benefits of Brexit will materialise even before the probable formal departure from the EU around December 2018.”

This from Steve Baker – ““In the end, it’s not really about the backstop,” he said. “The tearing frustration is that the UK has been negotiating with itself.

“Many of us have long believed that the row over the backstop is at least partly confected in order to have an orchestrated breakthrough”.

He said he and his pro-leave colleagues would focus their attention on the declaration. “Conservative MPs expect to get some commitment for the money. The overwhelming attitude of Conservative MPs is that paying £39bn for nothing is totally unacceptable,” he said.”

They are still struggling to grasp the basics about the exit bill, which is that it’s for things we’ve already had, but they want the EU to give us more stuff in the future without us paying for it.

With such limited mental capabilities, it’s no wonder it’s taken them this long to realise that the entire negotiation process has been designed to shaft them.

“@R&D – these low weight immigrant hedgehogs that you’ve been finding; what impact do you think they have on aggregate demand, and don’t you think that @Oldnat’s piles of leaves might distort the hibernation market for local hedgehogs?

And what about older hedgehogs? They’ve got all the worms, leaving the younger generation….yawn….”

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Aw, New Lab types ganging up again. And again, someone who goes on about Brexit far more than we have talked about immigration.

Oh I know it’s boring to some Alec, especially those who want to stick to their favoured topics, but as the child of immigrants the impact of immigration etc. has quite an impact on me. It also affects others, e.g, the spouse thing.

Our debate about batteries etc. to some, will seem futile, but it’s already been quite useful to me and someone I’m helping. The planning stuff is useful for property investments etc.

Depends how broad your interests are. I know some think that if people don’t agree it’s futile, but it’s not about winning, you can learn useful stuff whether you agree or not. I’ve learned quite a bit from Garj, including the social mobility stuff.

So your logic leads to the conclusion that UK military personnel should from 2019 pay the income tax set by Westminster for England and Northern Ireland wherever they are based in the UK. In which case, you must support lower earning personnel in Scotland paying more income tax than that set by the Scottish Government for people in Scotland.

Thank you for qcknowledging your ignorance of the A50 case and legal jurisdictions in the UK.

where it was said that in the discussion that Channel 4 used the figure (54% Remain) derived from Chris Hanretty’s extrapolation of the MRP analysis to LA areas while we have been looking at the tables which give 53.25%. The first would give you the 6 points swing. Presumably the difference is because differential turnout patterns are taken into account in the MRP or replicated from the 2016 result. But I can’t find the details in Hanretty’s paper:

I note that the British-Irish Council Summit convenes in IoM tomorrow. Will you be available to keep them right?

There’s been absolutely zero coverage of it so far in the local media that I can see, apart from a few government tweets. You’d think it would be a good opportunity to sort out some Brexit stuff, but although Sturgeon, Varadkar and so on are coming, the UK usually sends some fairly junior people. Still we get the chance to play the traditional colonial game of ‘Making the Englishman Look Stupid with Headgear’:

@”@”It does, however, highlight the fact that the EU legal systems often work quite well””

Its a shambles.

Assuming EU doesn’t appeal the Dyson verdict -and it hasn’t decided yet (!) – it will have to design new tests.
Whilst it is sorting that out existing labels will have no legal authority & manufacturers will be exposed to legal challenges from consumers.

Next up-Boilers?

The Times investigated EU Boiler tests & found they overstate performance when compared with actual average use.

The biggest manufacturers ?
Vaillant & Bosch-German companies……….who have between them seven members on the committee that designed the test.